QuickBooks and Xero

Both good but QB better value

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Hello 

This is an update on my earlier thread on the subject. 

I did go for the QB deal and made the time to go through QB functionality as a long term Xero user. 

From what I have gleaned to date, they really is not much difference between them from a functionality perspective. They do the same work, just where you click is different and of course the branding.

I like the branding of both of them. They both look good on the screen. Though QB appeals to my accountant's mindset. This would not be a deal-breaker for me. 

It was a significantly discounted deal, that got my attention. Understandably, I will not be able to move all existing clients to QB.

I have already moved some and working towards moving others. All new client will be put on QB. 

I understand, QB is no saint either. They are building their market share, until then, I can benefit from their current fantastic value for money.

Have you transferred your allegiance from sky blue to HMRC green?   

Replies (3)

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blue sheep
By NH
20th Apr 2021 06:34

recently moved a xero client (amazon/ebay trader) over to QB, pros and cons.

pros - better value for money, the main driver to eventually move them was both the software price and the free OneSAAS App that now comes with QB. Overall the client is saving £23 a month for the same functionality

cons - Dataswitcher did not work for this client and it was an extremely painful process for them to eventually tell us that after 2 weeks of trying.

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By Mr_awol
20th Apr 2021 10:14

Xero have repeatedly defended their high pricing on being a 'premium' product. We chose them over others because they were the best at the time, largely because of bank feeds.

With hindsight, it was probably the wrong decision. QBOL wasn't up to scratch at the time i believe, and SAGE one was abysmal. We glossed over Xero's weaknesses as a price to pay for the 'new way of working' but if we were to go back to that time and review the providers again, based on current offerings with full 20/20 hindsight, SAGE and QBOL are streets ahead of Xero who would be battling Freeagent for fourth place.

In fact, if Xero came in at £24/month as a new entrant now, i think they'd struggle to get a meaningful share of the market at all.

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By rmillaree
20th Apr 2021 11:54

Horses for courses - i am flexible ref sage/xero and quickbooks - although uisng all 3 lots i deffo prefer xero.

Generally speaking i would say the cash coding facility within xero and the find and recode facility within xero set it on a different level from the other two for my purposes. Minor additional benefits would be merging contacts etc. I do alot of correcting of miposted crapola though so my slant is possibly different from someone who is diligently posting stuff to the right place in the first place.

Sage is annoying changing anything or posting "refunds" where it can default to mixing output vat and input vat. sage is particulalry inflexible when it comes to changing vat schemes.

With quickbooks - don't ever let a client loose on automatically allocating bank feed transactions without adequate training !!!

With sage i do quite like the layout of the tb report etc for more simple sets of accounts.

I think for anyone to say one is the bees knees and the other two are not the bees knees is ignoring the fact they all have their specific quirks and all can either do the job best for that particular "job" or be maddengly frustrating for that particular "job"

Not to pass judgment but i do generally find the quality of books for clients who have started the process with quickbooks and posted a material amount of transactions without good guidance to be materially worse on average than the results i get for sage and xero clients !! Thats probably to be expected if quickbooks reels them in on the sly cheap with over promises as to what the software magically does (lies !!) where sage and xero are kinda saying well you are lucky to be be using our software (probable slight exaggeration here).

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